The Advantages Of Learning English
by artypendragon
Summary: (written as a fill for a prompt on the kinksofcamelot kink meme over on LJ) Arthur Pendragon, Once and Future King (but just Once King for now), laid low by his unquenchable love for Merlin, "uncharacteristically" falls prey to a multitude of misunderstandings and jealousy while acquiring the lingua franca of the world.


_Written as a fill for a prompt over at the KinksOfCamelot Kink Meme on LJ:_

 _"Starfire (DC comics) can learn any language by kissing someone who speaks it. When Arthur comes back, the language he knows is dead and Merlin will have to find a way to teach him contemporary English. What if there's a spell to transfer knowledge of a language by kissing? What if Arthur can't get that kiss out of his head afterwards, and also begins to wonder how/why Merlin knows that spell? Let the jealous pining begin ;)"_

* * *

It had taken an excited academic yammering away at her colleague and pointing at Arthur in a café for Merlin to realise that perhaps Arthur hadn't adjusted to life in the twenty-first century all that fully. It had taken her actually getting up and coming over to their table (Arthur comically freezing like a deer in headlights) for him to realise that Merlin had managed to introduce everything about the modern world to Arthur except its language.

Grabbing their drinks from the barista and hurrying over to their table, he caught the last of whatever speech she'd directed at Arthur:

"I'm a language historian working at the university nearby, and I couldn't help but overhear you talking to your partner—" Merlin blushed despite the circumstances and Arthur shot him a confused, nervous glance, not following a word— "in Anglo-Saxon! I've been trying to look into this language and its history for ages! How do you know how to speak it? Where did you learn it? Where do you come from, that you're so fluent in it? May I talk to you at length about it? Will you be the subject of my paper? I would happily pay you for it! I would really appreciate it!" the academic said without stopping for breath.

The bright smile on her face was perhaps the only thing that had stopped Merlin from grabbing Arthur and dashing from the place.

(Arthur loved cafés already, even though this was his first time at one, but he might have just stopped liking them forever.)

"Can you do something about this woman? What does she want?" Arthur murmured to Merlin, hand going to his hip, seeking out the familiarity of a sword that no longer hung there.

"Erm, yes, sorry," Merlin replied quickly in modern English, ever so conscious of the way the woman's eyes had widened at that exchange, and turned to the academic before she could ask about it. Aware of the other patrons' gazes upon them and Arthur's obvious discomfort at being singled out so suddenly, he said:

"I, uh, sorry, I'm not quite sure he'd be all too comfortable with that—you see, he's, erm… he's only recently come to London, and he doesn't speak English, not a word, and, he's, well, he's…" Casting about for anything to say to this woman, he settled on, "he recently got into a really bad, terrible accident where he nearly died and well, ever since he's woken up, he's only spoken in Anglo-Saxon for some reason even though it's a dead language and everything and the doctors think it's traumatic somehow and well, I've been trying to get him to speak English again and we're not sure when his ability's going to come back—"

"Oh, for God's sake, Merlin, you're rambling—" Arthur interjected, rising and doing what Merlin should have done in the first place: grabbing Merlin's hand and dashing from the place, leaving a disappointed and slightly unsurprised woman behind.

Merlin remained silent only until Arthur closed the front door of their house behind them and collapsed onto the sofa.

"I completely forgot you wouldn't know how to speak English and I didn't even figure it out because I speak our language around you all the time and—"

"Shut up, Merlin, you're giving me a headache—"

"—and then that woman just had to come up to us and ask us those questions—"

"It's all right, you moron—"

"—and I couldn't even think of a proper thing to say because I was so sure that you'd completely fit in that it didn't even occur to me that maybe you had no clue how to communicate with anyone who didn't live with you—"

"Merlin."

Arthur got up, placing his hands on Merlin's shoulders, squeezing them for comfort. Merlin thankfully quietened down.

"You've really not changed, have you? Talking on and on about things that don't even matter all that much. Why are you so concerned about it?" Arthur asked.

Merlin sighed.

"You'll laugh."

"I always do."

"I… just wanted your first time out to go perfectly, Arthur, all right?"

Arthur didn't laugh.

"Oh, come on," he said, exhaling. "You're so much more worried than I am about the whole thing. Were you thinking I'd forget that I've been dead for a millennium and that Camelot's the only city I've lived in if I spent two hours in the 'modern world?'"

Merlin looked miserable and downcast at that. Arthur wisely chose not to carry on that line of conversation.

"It's not as if you can't teach me the language," Arthur said, taking his hands off of Merlin's shoulders (quite reluctantly) and returning to the sofa.

Merlin brightened up.

"Of course!" he exclaimed, returning to his pacing. Arthur groaned, both for the pacing and because he had an inkling of what he'd got himself into.

* * *

The first week, Merlin inundated Arthur with words, saying it'd be easier to grasp the grammar if he knew enough vocabulary beforehand. Arthur forgot them all over the second week, retaining nothing but 'beautiful' and 'idiot' and refusing to consider why.

The second week, he learnt how to form basic sentences (during a restaurant outing, he said pleasantly to the waitress, "I'll have the Margherita, and I'm very much insufferable." Merlin had nearly choked on his water laughing, and would later deny any culpability in teaching Arthur entirely the wrong things to say.)

The days dragged their heels, and by the third week, Arthur was so frustrated with the slow pace that he no longer wanted to look past the elephant in the room.

"Do you not have magic anymore, Merlin?" he asked.

Merlin, in full flow about subordinate and main clauses, froze.

There was a minute of silence before Arthur realised Merlin wasn't going to say anything.

"Come on, Merlin. If you can still use it, I want you to find a spell to—" Arthur wiggled his fingers. "Got it?"

Merlin squinted at him.

"What?"

Arthur huffed.

"Just use your magic to teach me English! I'm not going to sit and memorise things, Merlin, I'm not a child."

"Oh. Oh!"

Still Merlin didn't thaw. As if Arthur didn't know what Merlin was doing, deliberately pretending to not understand him. All the fight left him, however, once he remembered how he'd reacted to finding out that Merlin had magic all those centuries ago. Why would Merlin have any reason to openly use it around him now?

Arthur got up and went over to Merlin.

Merlin shot him a nervous glance, trembling and beautiful.

"Look," Arthur said, winding an arm around Merlin's shoulders, keenly aching over the fact that that might be the only part of Merlin he'd ever be allowed to touch. "If it helps, when I was dying… the only things I could think of were how incredibly lucky I was—am—to have you by my side… and how your magic probably saved my life a hundred times."

Merlin leaned into Arthur's arms slightly.

"And, even now, to know the depth of your devotion to your king—" oh, how much it hurt not to be able to say me—"to know that you spent centuries in wait for my return, I cannot convey to you how much I—" his voice cracked. Merlin, who'd slowly been leaning into the half-hug, straightened up stiff. Arthur recited every swear word he knew in his head.

"I'll find a spell to teach you English, then, shall I?" Merlin abruptly stood, pushing his chair away, getting metres of distance between them. "Would you make dinner for the two of us while I conduct my research, then, sire?"

Arthur said nothing.

* * *

Another fortnight passed by with Merlin holed up in his study. Arthur hadn't yet entered it lest Merlin throw a book at him in his exasperation (the research to find the spell was apparently not going well), but he knew it was filled wall-to-wall with tomes on magic that Merlin had accumulated over his millennium of life. Going through them all would take Arthur another millennium, but Merlin, was, after all, not Arthur. He could probably read ten heavy books at once, the bumbling egghead, and would be done with his research soon (or so Arthur hoped; it had been too long since he had drunk in the sight of Merlin smiling).

Oh, Merlin. Stupidly loyal, unbearably kind, brilliant Merlin. Arthur's heart grew heavy at the thought of losing Merlin again, but to a future lover instead of death—he was finding it increasingly hard to decide which outcome he would prefer. Perhaps Merlin already had someone? Perhaps Merlin had already had a string of lovers, but Arthur could not begrudge him that, no matter how much he wanted to….

It had been just a couple of months since Arthur had stumbled off the edge of the lake into a hysterical Merlin's arms. Neither of them had really got the chance to talk at length, what with Arthur's idiotic hesitation to pick at old wounds and Merlin's dogged determination to get Arthur used to modern life before anything else. Arthur knew that someday they would have to sit down and talk about what the hell was going on, about all the times Merlin had risked his own life for Arthur's back in Camelot, all the times Arthur had been protected from enemies he didn't even know existed. Perhaps, if Arthur had retained his courage from his Camelot days, he would also tell Merlin the true depth of his feelings for him and how he had never been able to love Guinevere as wholly and unconditionally as he had loved—and oh, he still did love—Merlin.

The door to the study opened. Arthur perked up, switching off the TV. It had been hard to notice that he didn't know any English around the house, because whatever he picked up, Merlin immediately explained to him—be it a newspaper article or a terrible TV programme or even the labels in the fridge—and naturally Arthur stopped paying attention to the actual thing as soon as Merlin opened his mouth.

"Sorry to have abandoned you, Arthur," Merlin said, plopping himself down on the sofa beside Arthur. Arthur fought the wild need to touch Merlin somewhere, anywhere, and tell him that he'd abandoned Merlin first.

"Any progress?"

Merlin laughed hollowly. "It's just hard."

Arthur said nothing. Merlin just then looked like he was waiting for Arthur—someone in general, not Arthur in particular—to envelop him in his arms. Arthur almost did. Almost.

"I think we've been cooped up in here for too long," Merlin ventured eventually. "Shall we go out for a coffee?"

"I would love that, Merlin."

"No need to be so polite with me, prat."

"Oh, shut up, you idiot, I was trying to be nice but see if I ever do it again, good manners are entirely lost on you—" Arthur stopped himself before he went on, rolling his eyes (but watching to see if Merlin smiled).

Merlin did, and Arthur really couldn't ask for more.

They went to the same café that had started this whole thing going. Arthur nursed his coffee (what a marvellous thing it was, caffeine, imagine if Camelot had coffee, Arthur would never sleep), waiting for Merlin to return from the restroom. He was wondering what he could say that wasn't related to the spell or his return, when the academic from before sat down next to him without preamble.

Arthur stared at her. Was it normal for people in this age to do that? Just go and sit down next to strangers? Was this woman unique in her shirking of whatever the current social norms were?

"Hello," she began hesitantly, and Arthur almost jumped out of his skin, because she'd said Ƿes hāl, and how the hell did she know that?

"My name is Sophie, and I apologise for my unhampered talking from all those weeks ago—" ah, this woman was shit at Old English, but Arthur understood what she was saying well enough— "I've been coming to this coffee place daily in the hope of seeing you again, because my behaviour warrants an explanation and also because I really, really need to talk to you."

"Oh, it's all right," Arthur said, slowly in case the woman, Sophie, found it hard to follow. "My name is Arthur. Merlin told me all about you."

"I used to know another Merlin when I was a child," Sophie said, smiling. "He was an old man living next to my family, and he was the one that inspired me to take up the study of medieval languages in the first place. Your Merlin's… apparently… related to him."

Arthur stared some more.

"What happened to him?" Your Merlin. If only.

"He moved away; I never saw him again. But I digress! I'm sorry. I'm writing a paper on Anglo-Saxon and its potential uses in the present, and, well, you! Oh, hello, Merlin."

Merlin was standing at Arthur side. He looked as horrified as Arthur had when he'd first spotted Sophie.

"Why didn't you tell Arthur you knew me?" Sophie continued breezily, still in Anglo-Saxon. Arthur shot Merlin a look.

"What is she talking about?" he asked.

"Erm, my distant relative, also called Merlin," Merlin said, helpless. "He used to live in our house, next to Sophie's family."

Soon it was a very strange situation that Arthur found himself in: spending his days poring through books with Merlin and Sophie. It was mind-boggling to think that to him, Merlin was Merlin, his Merlin, with whom Arthur wanted to spend the rest of his life; but to others Merlin was a slew of different people that he'd had to pretend to be to survive over a thousand years.

At least Sophie was trying to be useful with the research. Merlin had fed her some nonsense story about why he needed to know more about a stupid spell, and Sophie'd happily bought it provided she got to spend time around Arthur. It wasn't hard to perceive her obvious infatuation with him, beyond normal scientific curiosity. Arthur was unsure of how to respond to her, because he didn't really think she was romantically interested in him; Merlin, however, looked adorably cross every time he left his study to see Sophie chattering away at Arthur with her infirm grasp of Old English, and Arthur would see what he wanted to see in Merlin's gesture, rationality be damned.

* * *

"So, I've heard," Sophie began one day, as if she wasn't going to just turn Arthur's world upside-down, "that there used to exist physical spells during the time that magic was prevalent in the medieval days."

Merlin looked up from the book he was perusing, a look of horror dawning on his face.

"What do you mean?" Arthur asked in modern English, the only sentence Merlin hadn't intentionally mistaught him.

"Oh, things like true love's kiss and whatnot. They were spells after all. Perhaps… you might be looking for something along those lines?" Sophie wondered, a coquettish note slipping into her voice.

Arthur looked at Merlin. He still seemed horrified that Sophie had said anything.

"Did you know?" Arthur asked, knowing already the answer to his question. "Did you know you could've done it that way?"

"I was looking for other ways—" Merlin waveringly addressed a point in space behind Arthur.

"You've been wasting our time, Merlin—" Arthur threw his hands up in frustration.

"Arthur, please—"

"Tell me, what would you need to do?" Arthur rounded on Merlin. Merlin looked crestfallen. Arthur repeated his question.

"Well, I would need to kiss you, Arthur," Merlin said.

Arthur's heart leapt for one ephemeral second in joy, then promptly shattered.

"Is the idea of kissing me so repulsive that you would rather squander months searching for another solution?"

Merlin appeared devastated. Arthur scowled, turning away from Merlin and Sophie. Then he turned back to them.

"Look, Merlin, why am I even here? Why did I come back? Wasn't I dead? What are we supposed to do? I've been—" and here he broke off with a choke, but in his mind the words stumbled forth, rapid and ceaseless— confused and off-balance and haven't been truly myself ever since I came to this place called London, everything's been strange, unfamiliar, honestly terrifying, and I have no idea what to do, how things here work, I abhor having to depend upon you like a crutch, you are the one thing in my life that is still the same and to even contemplate the thought that my touch would repel you like this sends daggers into my heart—

"Arthur!" Merlin shouted, as if he knew somehow of Arthur's internal philippic. Arthur exhaled, looking away from Merlin, because Merlin wouldn't look at him.

"I am the same. I'll always be your Merlin. I'll always be yours, in heart and soul, I live to serve you, I live for you—"

He closed his eyes. Arthur's heart thumped.

Sophie looked between the two of them, unsure.

"Is this a conversation you need me for?" she asked, moving towards the door.

Merlin glanced at her. "It's all right, you can stay, it's not like this matters, anyway, right?" he said in modern English, smiling sadly at her, which infuriated Arthur to no end because Merlin was shutting Arthur out. Again.

"You will talk so I can understand you," he snarled, every bit the king he had thought he no longer was.

Merlin looked unfazed, every bit the other side of Arthur's coin. Still wouldn't meet Arthur's eyes.

"It's just a kiss," he said to himself in modern English. "Just a kiss."

And then with a flash of his eyes he pushed Arthur against the wall and pressed up close against him.

"Dabo lingua mea ad te."

Arthur's heart nearly stopped as he, for the first time in his life, witnessed the gold flash across Merlin's irises.

And then Merlin kissed Arthur.

It was just—just a quick peck on the lips, done and dusted before Arthur could wrap his head around it, and Merlin would have stepped back, out of Arthur's reach, had a dazed Arthur not grasped his chance and slid his fingers over the back of Merlin's neck, murmuring, "Not so fast," and pulling him back in.

Merlin all but melted against Arthur, sighing into his mouth and holding onto Arthur's wrists. Arthur felt the blissful ache of Merlin's fingers pressing into his skin and the lovely brush of Merlin's soft lips across his, and never, ever wanted to focus on anything else. Neither would he have let go of Merlin, but an unbidden thought materialised in his head—I live to serve you—and then he was shoving Merlin away.

Merlin looked… stunned, staring right into his eyes, as if he was peering straight into Arthur's soul.

(Sophie looked like she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Neither of them paid her any mind.)

Arthur would have said something, but no words left his mouth. He sank to his knees as a bolt of pain ran through his brain. He nearly cried out, squeezing his eyes shut, holding onto his head for dear life.

"Arthur?" Merlin's voice floated through his mind. Panicked and concerned. His fingers rested on Arthur's temples, the one cool touch in the sea of fiery excruciation; in the blink of an eye the pain imploded.

Arthur managed to breathe, a long, rattling inhalation of a breath.

"I'm all right," he said. Not in Anglo-Saxon. It somehow felt as if Arthur had grown up speaking English. As if Arthur's first language had always been this glorious mishmash of the other languages of the world.

Sophie gasped.

Arthur raised his head to meet her shocked eyes. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Merlin's blinding smile.

"How did you do that?" Sophie exclaimed, first to him and then to Merlin. "Was that magic!" she cried.

"Magic," Merlin agreed with a shrug and another smile.

Arthur huffed slightly, standing up.

"I wonder how I ever missed you doing it back then," he said, again in English, feeling the words come as naturally to him as his sword-fighting. Sophie, wondrous and now laughing, ran over to embrace him.

Merlin turned away, but not before Arthur—with another leap of his treacherous heart—spotted a frown on his face.

* * *

Ever since the day he had performed that spell, Merlin had stopped looking Arthur in the eye and left him alone with Sophie more often than not.

It vexed Arthur to no end. Merlin had no reason to avoid Arthur like this!

…well, in all actuality, he did. Arthur didn't want to think about it; not that he could focus on anything, what with the kiss still so vivid in his memory. He had dreamt of kissing Merlin for ages, and his dream had finally come true — but not in the way Arthur had wanted it to. Every time he closed his eyes, he could almost feel Merlin's lips on his again, the sweet taste of whatever tea he'd had that day, the smell of the flowery soap Merlin used, the feel of Merlin's soft skin against his fingers. Every time, that memory would get more and more sullied when Arthur remembered that Merlin had probably done it only as his servant.

Sophie had taken the idea of magic being real and existent better than Arthur had expected her to. Better than Arthur himself would have. It was natural for her to, considering her area of study, but Arthur had thought she'd do more than just point at Merlin and be excited. Perhaps she really wasn't like the other people Arthur had observed wherever Merlin took him.

"I'm sorry I'm not yelling for Merlin to be burned at the stake," she said out of the blue one afternoon, reading Arthur like an open book.

Arthur, in the middle of reading the newspaper, jerked to attention. "What?"

"I know. I'm taking the fact that Merlin has magic too in stride, right?"

Arthur frowned. "It's all right. You reacted better than I did when I found out about Merlin."

"Imagine if it'd been anyone but me sitting here right now, listening to you talk about magic and spells," Sophie laughed. Arthur smiled along with her.

Sobering up, Sophie said, "Arthur, I have a secret to tell you. I should have told you earlier, but my suspicions hadn't been confirmed until the spell."

Arthur sat up, unsure of how to react.

"I know you two."

Arthur blinked.

"I mean, I know who you are, and I know where you're from, I know your story, I know all there is to know about you and Merlin."

"Erm—"

"It's not just 'cause of Merlin that I'm studying what I am," she sighed. "My family has a few heirlooms that are centuries old. Some of them are a set of tattered journals by… Gaius of Camelot. I'm sure you know him. Don't you? Your physician." Her lips pressed together in a thin line, as if she was terrified of Arthur's reaction.

Arthur drew in a sharp breath. Sophie dared not even glance at him as she spoke on.

"He wrote things about the two of you that no one else has, and, well, one of the reasons I took up language history was to decipher his work, and that's why I know who you are and that you would return someday, and so when I heard you speaking that day, I just couldn't let you go! Gaius's books are why I could guess about the language spell—"

Arthur cut her off. "Did you tell Merlin this? Did you show him Gaius's journals?" Merlin himself was out grocery shopping (leaving Arthur alone with Sophie).

Sophie shrugged helplessly. "I should have, I'm sorry. I just needed to know if he was really the Merlin of legend first."

Arthur took a deep breath.

He had priorities to sort out.

He took another deep breath and asked her the one question he really, really needed to know the answer to.

"It's not important. It can be rectified in days. What I want to know is, did you tell him about the spell?"

"What?" Sophie was taken aback, seemingly because Arthur wasn't angry with her. Why would he be?

"The spell for which he had to kiss me. Were you the one that told him about it? We didn't find a single mention of it in the books we went through."

How had Merlin known?

Sophie shook her head.

"I wasn't… I wasn't the one to tell him, Arthur."

So someone else had been? Is that what she meant to say? Had Merlin learned all the languages he knew kissing someone else? Had Merlin covered someone else's mouth with those impossibly soft lips of his? Had his eyes fluttered closed with them? Had Merlin wanted to kiss them unlike he did Arthur—

Arthur suddenly felt very small, as if some part of him had been ripped away. Spotting Sophie's pitying look, he made to speak, but just then the front door opened to admit Merlin hefting two huge bags.

"I'm back," Merlin said. He stilled as soon as he took in Arthur's sorrowful countenance.

"Sire?" he asked, looking straight at Arthur for the first time in a long time.

Arthur scoffed and turned away, because there was nothing else he trusted himself to do.

Sophie got up and took Merlin's arm, gently leading him out of the room. Arthur watched them go silently.

As much as he tried, Arthur could not focus on the newspaper again. He couldn't help but succumb to thoughts of Merlin, whatever lovers he had had, who had known about his magic and who had freely given him their languages with their kisses.

Oh, Merlin, Merlin.

He wanted to join Sophie and Merlin in the study, but he didn't want to see Merlin retreat from him yet again. So there in the living room Arthur sat, stewing in his own roiling emotions for hours.

When the sun had set and Arthur could spot the first stars outside the window, Merlin and Sophie emerged, looking peaceful, tired, and happy, as if they had talked things over until they knew each other inside out. Arthur suddenly couldn't bear to look at Sophie, knowing that Merlin would never look so untroubled with him.

"What do you want to do now?" Merlin asked, sitting down next to Arthur and brushing his shoulder with his own. It was an obvious white flag; there was no way Arthur could or would stay hurt or angry with Merlin now.

Arthur just smiled at Merlin; Merlin's own smile widened.

"Eat the dinner you make," he replied. "Though I know it'll taste terrible, as always."

Merlin sighed loudly, rolling his eyes. "Fine."

"Sophie," Arthur said, finally looking away from Merlin. "Why don't you stay? Merlin can cook for all three of us."

"Erm. Yes. I can," Merlin said, awkward and discomfited all of a sudden.

"Are you sure?" Sophie looked at Merlin hesitantly. "I know you wanted to talk to Arthur—"

"No, stay," Merlin insisted. "You should talk to Arthur, else he'll just try and 'help' me in the kitchen, making a mess of everything and forcing me to clean it up, because he loves to annoy me to death."

Arthur shrugged. "It's how I've always entertained myself."

Merlin mumbled "prat" under his breath. Arthur let out a shout of surprised laughter in response.

"You two sound so… married," Sophie snickered. "No wonder Gaius described you as halves of a whole."

The grin vanished from Arthur's face in an instant. The strained silence that followed was broken by Merlin smiling offhandedly and vanishing into the kitchen. Sophie's face was a study in foot-in-mouth syndrome at that moment.

"Well," Arthur said, striving to break the silence, "What are your plans following today's revelations?"

Sophie shrugged.

"I don't know, really. I worked all my life for a language which was basically the key to finding you and Merlin, and now that I have, now that I know that I wasn't—crazy or delusional or wasting my time, I just. I just want to take a break, live in another country for a while, never see Gaius's books or you two again."

"That's probably how Merlin feels, too," Arthur said. "I cannot begin to imagine the exhaustion of breathing for a thousand years."

Sophie smiled. "At least he's finally happy now that he has you again."

Arthur caught her eye, and it was as if he was suddenly in the back of his own head, powerlessly watching himself ask: "Don't you think it's because he has you?"

Sophie asked, confused, "What?"

Arthur shook his head, mute. "Nothing important."

"Arthur, are you an idiot?"

Arthur snapped to attention. "What?"

Sophie shook her head in a remarkable imitation of Arthur. "Nothing important."

Arthur huffed lightly. "If we were in Camelot, I wouldn't care that you're a woman, you would be in the stocks for not addressing your king properly."

"Merlin was an exception for you then, eh?" Sophie winked.

"Merlin was… is… a great many things to me." Arthur reddened as he said this, aware of how he was phrasing it, knowing how Sophie would understand it.

"Have you ever actually tried telling Merlin that?"

Arthur, flabbergasted at the unexpected question, didn't reply.

Sophie repeated her words, adding, "Look. I'm not. Blind, you know. He doesn't like me like that. He's under a similar, ahem, misunderstanding. I mean, he thinks you like me like that."

Arthur dared not speak or even think.

Sophie fixed him with her eyes. "Are you going to make me say it out loud? Really? A millennium of living death messed with your mental faculties, you say?"

She rolled her eyes and turned away, muttering to herself, "To think my life's work would culminate in my playing matchmaker for a couple of thousand-year-old geezers," but Arthur, stupid, oblivious, hopeless Arthur heard every word she said, warmth blooming in his chest like a bouquet of burgeoning roses.

* * *

And, well, there they were: two fools who couldn't talk to each other to save their life in any age, any time.

Or perhaps Sophie was wrong and it was just Arthur being stupidly self-sacrificial and incommunicative.

She had left, right after the second revelation she gave Arthur, saying, "Well, you don't need me for this part," and Arthur couldn't have agreed more.

"Merlin," Arthur called, walking through the hallway to the kitchen. "Sophie's left."

Merlin was mumbling in the kitchen; Arthur realised he was using magic to chop vegetables and move pots around. He was grateful that Merlin didn't abruptly stop when Arthur entered; it meant Merlin wasn't afraid of Arthur's reaction.

"Shame," Merlin said, looking anything but upset at those news, lounging on his tiny kitchen stool, leaning against the wall like one of those models Arthur had seen in a magazine.

Arthur swallowed a lump in his throat, heart clenching at the sight of Merlin looking so beautiful just sitting there doing nothing, opened his mouth to tactlessly confront Merlin about his feelings—when the idea of an eternity with him flitted across his mind, and the thought that maybe Merlin doesn't want this, not really stopped him dead. He pursed his lips.

"Out with it, sire," Merlin smiled, able to see through Arthur's dallying.

"Merlin," Arthur began, cutting himself off yet again, in his head going did you really hate kissing me, Merlin, how many people have you kissed and was it just for the languages, Merlin, have you been in love, Merlin, does the thought of an endless future with me fill you with dread, Merlin, I can't stand it—

"I can and will read your mind if you don't say what's on it soon, you know," Merlin said. He raised his hand, and Arthur for a second thought Merlin actually meant it, until he heard a rice cooker start beeping beside him.

"Merlin, how did you know about the language spell? Have you used it before?" Innocuous, safe questions.

The rice cooker went dead.

"Oh," Merlin said, looking away, "I, erm."

Arthur waited.

"I… I have to tell you something."

Hope flared in Arthur's heart.

"There isn't actually any spell that can do what I did, not in any book or resource. It was Sophie's talk about physical spells that gave me the idea to try something, but of my own creation, and Arthur, I deceived you, I made you kiss me even though I could've done without it and I'm so sorry I forced you to but I didn't know if I'd ever get to do it ever again so—"

"Shut up, Merlin, you're rambling again."

It wasn't the words as much as the blinding smile on Arthur's face that silenced Merlin.

"You idiot," Arthur said, shaking his head, ignoring the fact that he himself was a bigger idiot, "You utter nincompoop. Blind as a bat, you are."

"Hey," said Merlin indignantly, but he looked hopeful.

"I've been going half-mad—" Arthur swallowed his words. He couldn't say them. He couldn't say them back in Camelot, when he was dying in Merlin's arms, he couldn't say them now; but Merlin could (only about ninety percent of the time, Arthur supposed, considering their current circumstance) understand Arthur better than Arthur himself, and the clarity that then dawned on Merlin's face stole Arthur's breath away.

"You're the real thick one here," Merlin said lightly, getting off his perch, making his way over to Arthur amongst the rapidly-disappearing vegetables (no way in hell Merlin was going to pay attention to anything but Arthur now). "I learned my languages the hard way, you know: living amongst people."

Arthur dared to curl his fingers around the lovely curve of Merlin's neck, the action reminding him of what had happened the last time he had done the same.

"Only you would think that a man who waited hundreds of years for you didn't love you with his heart and soul," Merlin said, fond in his admonishment, smiling so hard Arthur couldn't tear his eyes away.

"I love you," Arthur choked out, because he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn't say it then and there, "so much, Merlin, I love you, I was so jealous, I regret that someone else had to get involved for me to have the courage to say anything—"

"Shut up, Arthur, you're rambling," Merlin snickered, leaning in for what was undoubtedly going to be the best kiss of Arthur's life.


End file.
